11/5/04

"Not about gays or religious or moral values," part 2 -- Redneck Redux

Ok, I over-stated and side-stated the particulars of redneck righteousness (if side-stated, like side-stepped, can be an acceptable word) -- there are lots and lots and lots and lots of people in the south, white people, who bristle at the use of the N-word. I do not intend to suggest in any way that the south is filled ONLY with pea-brained horse's asses who consider the late Jim Varney an intellectual.

Many of those people were raised by parents who used that word casually, and not necessarily as a pejorative. It was the only descriptive they knew for colored folks. (One wonderful old fart from Houston once said to me, "I knew this country was in trouble when they shot doctor King. You know who he is, right, the Nigger preacher? One of the finest men this country ever produced, and those bastards shot him down." I remember it so clearly because of the reverberating cognitive dissonance that followed me for months.) But they, the next generations, don't like it, know it's a slap in the face and do not care to use it or hear it used.

Remember, in those so-called "Red States," Bush didn't win 100% of the vote ... hell, Texas, where they know him well, had one of the slimmer margins in the south (and those votes, some have told me, were only to "keep him the Hell out of our Texas for another four years." Some Texans have told me that if they do secede, as is their legal right, the first thing they're gonna do is "revoke that sonummabitch's passport, put him on OUR terrorist list." Ahh, fantasy -- it helps ease the pain of reality.)

When first living down thar, my wife came home from work one day and pointed out that we (both raised north of The Line) had been TAUGHT to consider anyone who has that drawl to be an inbred dummy. Well, some are. Many many many aren't. (No statistics cause any poll that asked such a question would probably meet with an introduction to Mssrs Smith and Wesson from one of those inbred dummies.)

So no, that casual use of the N-word would be passed without comment because the good folk ALSO know how a piece-packing 'neck might react.

But what is still acceptable is the casual dissing of gay people -- words like "fag" and "dyke" and "faggot" are heard a lot (and not only a little in the North, too -- remember, Bush won a lot of votes in the Blue States), used as insults to or about straight folks, i.e., "That Hillary Clinton is a dyke." And no need EVER to explain that to be a dyke is some sort of evil monstrous satanic cult where women gather together in dark rooms and pee on statues of Our Lord.

And not only slang. "Gayyy" and "Lesbian" are pronounced the way some would pronounce "Negro" in the old days, as in telling someone about the man you work with and that person replying, "But he's a neeeeegro!"

Curiously, "faggot" is used by boys on other boys in their social area, and many time, tagging someone as a "faggot" means you get to knock him down and fuck him in the ass. True. Midnight Cowboy was not created out of thin air. But of course, that doesn't mean the knocker/fucker is gay, nossir, cause he likes girls and besides, the knockee/fuckee admitted he liked it (right after being told he'd be beaten to death on the spot if he didn't say so). But this is and has been a universal phenomenon, except more common in the south because they don't have as many months each year when it's too cold to take your pants off.

So ok -- I do believe that people who voted for George W Bush in the year 2004 are either:

1. Ignorant as hell
2. Dumb as hell
3. Both
4. Terrified of evil dark-skinned people who 'hate us for our freedom"
5. Rich and expecting to get much richer in the coming four years of payoffs and kickbacks
6. Race-haters and red-baiters
7. Men scared of Mommy (i.e., Teresa Heinz Kerry, Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barabara Boxer, etc)
8. Women scared of the wrath of the anti-choice Daddies (Pat Robertson, smiling jerry Falwell, etc) and what those kindly Jesus-loving people would do to them if they found out she voted against what he thinks is in the Bible

I believe that Bush and his venomous pack of hench-scum convinced old Vietnam vets that there had been no animosity toward that war and/or its participants before 1971 when John Kerry repeated the claims he'd heard from other vets (as if "Hey Hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today? was not being chanted in 1967 and Richard Nixon wasn't hiding behind the curtains in the White House, terrified of the demonstrators in 1969 and 1970) that they somehow convinced the country that the man who went to war was a craven coward and the man who hid out in a safe toy flyer unit was a courageous fighter.

So yeah.

In the final analysis, people voted for Bush because they were scared, even if they despised him.

And people voted for Kerry because they were scared (mostly of Bush) even if they disliked him.

And that makes the American voting public ... what?

Chickenshits as far as I can -- a bunch of running-scared, easily stampeded chickenshits.